07/07/2026
Please bear with this…I promise it’s not really about football ❤️
Hearts…of Lions
There is something about English football that has always felt like heartbreak waiting for a place to happen.
We call it support, but sometimes it has looked more like a wound.
Hope dressed in flags.
Fear dressed in anger.
Expectation dressed as entitlement.
And when it hurts, my days, have we known how to make it hurt loudly.
Some of us have burned effigies.
Some of us made villains out of boys.
We have asked human beings to carry the grief of a nation and then punished them when their legs, their timing, their nerve, their bodies, dared to be human.
Beckham knew it.
Southgate knew it.
So many of them knew it.
To miss.
To lose.
To fall short.
And then to discover that the country who called you lion could so quickly decide you were prey.
What were we protecting?
Maybe it was never only football.
Maybe it was the unbearable feeling of believing…again and again, and being sent back out into the wilderness.
Maybe every tournament became another front door we begged to open.
Please.
Let this be home.
And then along came Gareth, not the kind of leader we were expecting, certainly not the leader we thought we needed.
Not bold, not loud, not making promises of absolution.
A way of being that quietly and carefully begins at the foundations.
He did not teach our nation how to win first.
He taught us it was ok to lose.
He taught us that we didn’t need to be exiled.
That matters.
We must be allowed to miss penalties and still come home.
We can still find each other, and most importantly ourselves.
This new stewardship gave us that.
A place to return to.
A culture.
A steadiness.
A safe and steady home.
And now we’re watching something growing from the patient trust of it all.
Pickford, so often damned, until we see him again with heart and body on the line, throwing himself into the moment as though the goal is not just a net behind him, but a promise he intends to keep.
Kane, our faithful and trusted captain, our goalscorer…a man who knew the importance of tending to his own soil.
Uprooting and replanting himself elsewhere, not because loyalty meant nothing, but because growth sometimes asks us to move towards more nourished ground.
Our Jude, our talisman with boots people said were too big, when perhaps the truth is simpler.
Perhaps they just fit him.
Perhaps this friction comes because we are not always comfortable watching someone occupy their own space, without needing to ask permission.
We also have those who we expected to be chosen, those who carried the disappointment quietly while we roared for someone else.
We expect victory will make us feel whole.
But maybe something is changing.
Maybe we are all simply learning.
Maybe this feels different not because we might win, but because we can come back to ourselves when things go wrong.
Maybe that is why the joy matters.
The laughter, the singing…the playing.
The celebration before the job is done.
Not arrogance.
Not complacency.
A fuller relationship with life.
A life that can enjoy the moment without needing certainty about the ending.
A life that knows tomorrow will still ask for our hard work, but today is allowed to be felt.
A life built on foundations so solid, they disappear beneath the thing everyone can finally see.
A life where loss won’t destroy us.
Oh…
Losing won’t destroy us…
What a heavy weight for losing to carry.
It barely seems fair for loss to carry that burden.
Maybe…
We can give ourselves a softer landing…
We don’t have to meet our heartbreak with shame.
We don’t have to judge the loss as a betrayal.
We don’t have to condemn ourselves for being stupid for believing.
We simply come home and tend to our wounds with care.
They are not just England players.
We are not just England fans.
We are a nation of humans learning how to come home.
And maybe…just maybe it gives us a better chance of it coming home ❤️
